Polish Solidarity leader killed in car accident

Sunday 13 July 2008

Bronislaw Geremek, one of the leading lights in Poland's anti-Communist Solidarity movement and former Foreign Minister, was killed in a car accident on Sunday near the Polish town of Lubien.

Bronislaw Geremek, a leading thinker in Poland's anti-communist Solidarity movement and a former foreign minister, was killed in a car crash on Sunday aged 76.
 

In Poland, « the movement toward authoritarianism is a problem of memory », said Borislaw Geremek in a May 2007 interview with France 24’s Ulysse Gosset.

Geremek had been driving his Mercedes saloon near the
western Polish town of Lubien when it veered into the opposite
lane and collided head-on with an oncoming van, police
spokeswoman Hanna Wachowiak told Reuters.
 

Polish President Lech Kaczynski, a political opponent of
Geremek's, said he was "deeply saddened" by the news.
 

The European Commission and France, which holds the EU's
rotating presidency, hailed Geremek as "a great conscience" of
his country for his championing of liberal democracy under the
communist regime and his later advocacy of European unity.
 

"He was a European of exceptional stature, a Pole of
unwavering convictions. All his life he demonstrated political
courage without compromise," said Jose Manuel Barroso, president
of the European Commission.
 

"I hope future generations remember Bronislaw Geremek as an
example of a free spirit and that he stays in our memory as one
of the most powerful symbols of liberation against all
oppression."
 

The bearded, pipe-smoking Geremek was a respected historian
and author of numerous books, including on mediaeval European
history, his academic speciality. He also sat in the Liberal
group in the European Parliament.
 

"He was a friend of old, a great conscience of Poland, one
of the great intellectuals of central Europe," French Foreign
Minister Bernard Kouchner and France's European Affairs Minister
Jean-Pierre Jouyet said in a joint statement.
 


 

"MANY TALENTS"
 

Geremek had belonged to the reform wing of Poland's ruling
Communist Party as a young man but quit in 1968 to protest
against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the
extinguishing of that country's democracy movement.
 

He later became a key adviser to Lech Walesa and the
Solidarity trade union, taking part in the round-table talks
that led to the first partially free elections in postwar Poland
and the end of one-party communist rule.
 

Geremek served as foreign minister from 1997 to 2000,
overseeing Poland's accession to NATO.
 

"Geremek was a sensitive, deeply cultured person who
combined many talents," said Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, another
former foreign minister and a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
 

"He was the kind of person I was happy to have on my side,
rather than as an opponent."
 

Geremek clashed with Poland's previous conservative of
government of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of President
Kacyznski, over his refusal to declare he had never collaborated
with the communist secret service under a new vetting law.
 

Geremek received strong support from fellow MEPs and
Poland's Constitutional Court later struck down much of the law.